Recently a special snowflake left a particularly whiny and misogynistic comment on my post 100 submissive men for every dominant woman which happened to be a perfect example of something I wanted to rant about anyway. This may come as a terrible shock, so make sure you’re sitting down and have a strong drink handy. Are you ready to have your mind blown?

Women can tell when someone hates us.

I know it sounds ridiculous, but hear me out. Women are actually not unlike people – we can understand spoken words, we notice people’s actions, and we can even fit those words and actions into a mental model that allows us to draw conclusions about what sort of person we’re dealing with.

So, let’s draw some conclusions about this whiny little shit. But first, a quick aside: if you’re going to tell me not to feed the trolls, you’ll save us both some time if you just go fuck yourself now and spare me the pointless whining about how trolls will totally go away if I’m a good girl and just ignore them like you want me to. Quietly ignoring the asshats of the world fails to send the message that their behavior is not okay. And yes, I’m well aware that being a big meanie-pants mcpoopyhead to the commentor will fail to change his mind. He’s a lost cause, I’m not interested in trying to change his mind. I’m interested in blowing off steam and potentially making people who don’t completely disagree with him have second thoughts about that particular brand of idiocy.

Bit of idiocy the first:

I have had dated more than 15 different girls and had sex with them all. I can assure you that none of them, NONE of them had any dominant tendencies whatsoever. [Spelling corrected because using dominate when you meant dominant is one of my big pet peeves]

That’s nice? 15 women is not exactly a representative sample, but more importantly, there is a blindingly obvious common denominator here – the commentor! If he has never dated a woman with any interest in domination, one might possibly start thinking he’s just not very good at finding dominant women. Maybe something about him repels them, which brings us to bit of idiocy the second:

… women have way more options that men in the dating scene, as a result women don’t see the need of developing any skills to satisfy their men. In simple words, they bring nothing new to the table. The only ones that do are usually the fat or old ones because they think they need to be kinky to make up the deficiencies they have.

This is the bit I really wanted to rant about. This miserable little asshole not only hates women, but he clearly thinks we’re too stupid to figure him out. Then he acts surprised that none of us seem to be comfortable revealing any taboo sexual desires to him. God only knows why, I’d certainly feel perfectly comfortable opening up to someone who clearly despises me. Why would I be afraid that he would shame me for being the wrong sort of kinky (that is, the kind that doesn’t turn him on) or for not performing kink the right way (the right way being the way that he likes) or for failing to be the perfectly poised uberdom every second of every day or for having any sexual desires that don’t revolve around his dick? I’m 100% certain he would be kind and gracious in all of those situations. No, if you’re wondering, I couldn’t even type that with a straight face.

Gee, I have no fucking idea why dominant women aren’t falling all over themselves to get a piece of this guy. I mean, nothing’s hotter than someone who is too stupid to realize he’s actively driving away the women he says he wants to have sex with.

The one thing our commentor isn’t completely wrong about is the fact that women who are conventionally attractive enough will get dates even if they have absolutely no other redeeming qualities (that article is both funny and horrifying, I highly recommend it). Fortunately, there’s a simple fix for this: stop dating women who are awful! If you want someone who is kind, interesting, funny, and adventurous in bed, why the fuck are you deciding who to pursue based on looks alone? If you treat woman like our looks are the only thing that matters, you don’t get to act surprised that some women will assume the only thing they need to be is hot.

Guys, you can’t both hate women and have satisfying relationships with us. Either get over your misogyny or get used to having boring, disconnected sex, but don’t whine and cry about how awful we are for not baring our souls to people who obviously despise us. It’s pathetic and it makes you look stupid.

At Westcoast Bound I went to a workshop called Pet Play 101 by Ponygirl Bixy, and she said something that really resonated with me. She described pet play as (for some people) being a release from human responsibilities. For example, someone who was nervous about meeting new people and making small talk might have a much easier time of it if they were in pet gear (such as a muzzle and paws) that made it clear they couldn’t talk or shake hands.

Sometimes, I really don’t feel like talking (really, a shy introvert doesn’t always leap at the chance to hear her own voice? What are the odds?). It would be awesome to have a socially acceptable way of signalling that it’s not that I don’t like you, I just don’t fucking want to talk right now.

Aside from not always feeling particularly social, depending on the headspace I get into in a scene, I may feel even less vocal than usual. I think it would be really fun to do a scene where any expectation of  me talking was completely off the table. Given my lack of interest in bottoming some of you are probably very confused right now, which brings me to my next point.

Why is the pet in a pet play scene always the bottom? I know in a lot of ways it’s convenient to have the pet bottom, but come on, have you people never met a cat? I love cats, but even I fully acknowledge that they’re often adorable, furry little assholes. Other animals might not lend themselves as well to topping, but with all that presenting their fuzzy tummies to be rubbed, then savaging your hand when you fall for their trick, cats are clearly sadists.

As for assuming the human is always the one in control, I can’t imagine that ‘in control’ is how anyone locked in a cage with a lion would feel. Or the bottom could be chained up as a sacrifice for beast in the woods, or suddenly pounced by a particularly large house cat, or hunted through the play party, or …

Instead of making it the mute pet’s responsibility to make themselves understood, why not make it the human bottom’s problem to figure out what the big scary kitty wants and how to get out with (most of) his skin intact?

Fantasies are great. They’re hot and fun and what drew many of us into kink in the first place. But they’re not reality. Clinging to a fantasy in the face of real life evidence to the contrary requires ignoring that evidence. Lack of evidence makes it just a little bit difficult to figure out what’s going wrong, let alone how to fix it.

For example, years ago on fetlife in the submissive men and the women who love them group, a man started a thread asking for guidance on being the best submissive he could be. All well and good, but he posted in all caps and replaced ‘E’s with ‘3’s. Person after person replied asking him to post in a more readable format, but he insisted they were all out to deny his self expression and eventually left in a huff because no one would tell him how to be a better submissive. I sincerely wish I was exaggerating, but he was actually that deluded.

This guy was clearly living in a fantasy land, and it worked out badly for him. If he had been willing to put aside his fantasy that he was such a special and unique snowflake that everyone would rush to do him favours no matter how poorly he expressed himself, he might have been able to learn something.

As annoying as that particular person was, he really only hurt himself. None of the people he so thoroughly alienated were actually harmed by trying to read a few badly formatted posts. Other types of fantasies, however, can be much more harmful.

There are three main categories of fantasies I see in the scene. ‘It would be hot if…’, ‘It would be convenient for me if…’, and ‘My kink would be okay if…’.

‘It would be hot if…’ fantasies are the all too common ‘this protocol turns my crank, so I’m going to use it everywhere, even if S/slashy speak on a simple message board makes people want to claw their eyes out’, or ‘all the female doms in porn like verbal humiliation, so you should you like it too’. If you willfully ignore other people’s complaints about how hard your posts are to read, you’ll be left scratching your head and wondering why you can’t seem to make friends with anyone. If no-one you approach will give you the time of day, there may be a reason for it.

‘It would be convenient for me if…’ is that much more irritating. I put ‘I declared myself dominant, so you must all bow down and address me as Sir Lord Emperor Black Dragon Wolf’ in that category. It would be great if simply calling yourself a dom/top/master made you effortlessly confident in all situations – believe me, I wish it had worked that way for me. I think ‘my way is the one true way and the rest of you are all wrong’ belongs in this category too. It would be awfully convenient if there were one true way to do things that was clearly best for everyone. If there were, we could all stop screwing around and just do the stuff that works. In the real world, insisting there is one right way causes people to laugh at you either behind your back or right to your face. It’s also a bit of a setback when you inevitably encounter a situation where your ‘one true way’ doesn’t work.

‘My kink would be okay if…’ fantasies probably irritate me the most, although all of them are abundantly annoying. This is where I place fantasies like ‘all women are naturally submissive, so it’s okay for me to be dominant’, and ‘I follow the ancient Japanese tradition of rope masters, handed down generation by generation in a secret ceremony, so it’s okay for me to like tying people up’. It’s okay to be kinky, dammit! A lack of permanent damage and your partner’s informed consent makes your kink okay.

What’s not okay is hurting other people while you try to convince yourself your kink is okay. I don’t feel safe in a scene where asshats can go around insisting that women are all naturally submissive without anyone calling them on their shit. Your need to put a band-aid on your insecurity about your kink does not outrank my need to be able to participate in the kink community without getting attacked just for being who I am.

Feeling insecure about whether it’s okay to be kinky is perfectly natural, and not what I’m complaining about. What I can’t stand is people deciding that because they feel insecure, everyone should act in a way that lets them avoid dealing with their insecurities. The scene is based on consent, and I do not consent to denying who I am so that you don’t have to worry about whether you’re ‘doing it right’.

Submissive men, this is your periodic reminder that the bar to impress a dominant woman has been set so low that you should be worried about tripping over it, not failing to reach it. Don’t believe me? Here’s an except from an email I sent last year:

When I asked if you could tell me anything about yourself as a person, I wanted some information about who you are outside of your kinks (which you did not need to list for me again. I’m not stupid, I can scroll down to your first message and see the list there).

The truly sad thing is that the message I was replying to was far from the worst I’ve seen – the content may have been terrible, but at least it was all spelled correctly. However, all the attention to spelling and grammar in the world won’t help if you refuse to treat me like a human fucking being.

Guys, the bar is so low that all you have to do to impress a dom is to treat her like she’s a person. Seriously, that’s it. You don’t have to be rich, powerful, or a combination motorcycle race champion/underwear model. All you have to do is start from the bizarre and outlandish assumption that we’re people with interests of our own, not a malfunctioning fetish vending machines. I can’t even begin to tell you how infuriating it is to be so badly disrespected so very often by people who claim to worship women like me that the most basic acknowledgement of my humanity is all it takes to get my attention, but the smart men out there should be using my frustration to their advantage. Someone might as well get something out of this mess.

Oh, and for bonus points: read your potential dom’s writing! Using myself as an example, I have an entire goddamn blog that tells you more than any profile ever could about what I care about, how I think, and who I am as a person (sure, the blog mostly shows my ragey side, but there’s still a lot of information here). If you’ve found someone on fetlife, for fucks sake read their profile and look at their posting history (scroll down a little, it’s below their websites and above their fetishes). Making a comment about something your potential dom said recently is not only a great way to start a conversation, but it shows that you were willing to make the grueling effort of clicking your mouse a couple of times and doing a little reading.

Grumpy as I very often am, I really do want to be impressed by submissive men. I know many of you have a good handle on this already, but for the guys just catching up: I want to read your messages and wonder whether I’m awesome enough for you. I want your messages to make me sad that I don’t have room in my life for another awesome submissive man and determined to find someone to set you up with. I want your writing to impress me so much that I ask if I can use it as a guest post on my blog. I want you guys to be as amazing as I know you can be. Can’t you meet me half way?